This year’s Call of Duty racked up $1B in global sales, Activision says
Activision today boasted that Call of Duty: WWII and Destiny 2 were the top two best-selling games, in terms of revenue, in North America for 2017. It’s the ninth straight year, beginning with 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, that Call of Duty has been the region’s top-selling console video game, Activision said.
The company also said Call of Duty: WWII had earned $1 billion in global sales, and that Destiny 2 had already outsold its predecessor, in terms of units sold. The Call of Duty figure was sell-through, meaning products bought by customers and not ones sitting on retailers’ shelves.
Activision did not specify the total revenue or units sold for Destiny 2. The first Destiny launched on four consoles — PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One — but two of them had a foot out the door. Destiny 2 launched on PC on Oct. 24, and Activision called that the biggest launch (by Activision Publishing) on PC ever.
Activision rarely spoke in specific terms about the original Destiny ’s units or revenue. Shortly after its 2014 launch, Activision said Destiny sold more than $325 million in its first five days of availability. Since then, it’s touted secondary measures, like numbers of registered players or sessions played, to describe the franchise’s popularity.
Shortly after Call of Duty: WWII launched on Nov. 3, Activision said the newest game had sold twice as many units than its predecessor, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, did at launch in 2016. Activision didn’t provide hard numbers, but the claim, and the fact Activision chose to make it public, seemed to validate the franchise’s pivot away from futuristic warfare back to its World War II roots.
